The Devil's Metal (26 page)

A shiver ran up my spine. I knew it wasn’t
just the wet clothes.

“You feel it, too?”

He leaned back and thoughtfully spun his mug
around.

“I don’t know what I feel, exactly. But
whatever it is, I’ve felt it from the start. I’m not into
supernatural, hippie-dippie mumbo-jumbo shit. I’m not the
god-fearing man I used to be. But there’s something with us…almost
like it’s on the bus with us…that hasn’t let us go. I know that
doesn’t make any sense but the reason I’m telling you is because I
know you can feel it too. These things…these aren’t coincidences.
I’ve been around enough to know when to call a spade a spade. It’s
almost like the band is cursed…and it’s only going to get worse
from here on out.”

Cursed. That almost made perfect sense. Or
it would have, had the idea of a curse not been so ridiculous. I
was as much into the hippie-dippie mumbo-jumbo as Bob was and my
journalistic mind was constantly trying to find reason and
logic.

“Curses don’t exist,” I said
reluctantly.

“But what if they do? It would explain some
things. This feels like more than a string of bad luck. First that
girl dies, rest in peace. Then Noelle has a mental breakdown. Could
one thing be the result of the other? Sure. But I don’t buy
it.”

“Me neither,” I said. “But if it’s a curse,
someone had to have cursed us. Who would do that?”

He raised his brows. “I couldn’t tell you,
Rusty. But I can tell you I’ve heard some pretty weird shit at
night on the bus when everyone is asleep.”

I tried to ignore the goosebumps on my arms.
“What shit?”

“Graham,” he said soberly. “He rarely
sleeps. He only sleeps when the sun comes up and then it’s only for
a few hours. I’ve never seen anyone get by on such little sleep
before and so consistently.”

“What does he do? Just lie there?”

He nodded. “Oh, he lies there. On his back.
Staring up at the ceiling. And he chants things. Very weird things.
You can barely hear him, but sometimes I really try and listen.
He’s not chanting in English, you can bet your mother on that. It
sounds like Latin to me, but then I’m a pretty ignorant soul.”

I leaned in across the table and lowered my
voice. “Have you ever seen him do any of that Satanic shit that
he’s always talking about?”

Bob smoothed back his hair again and seemed
to think. “I can’t really say. Maybe chanting in Latin counts. I’ve
seen him always talking to this equally freaky girl.”

I straightened up. “Was she blonde?”

“No,” he said. “And I know who you’re
talking about, the GTFOs. No, I haven’t seen the blondes around.
They aren’t allowed on the bus at any rate, strict orders from
Jacob. This girl is a bit on the chunky side, really short, nasty
haircut.”

“That’s Sparky, she’s one of them.”

“Interesting,” he mused. “Well, anyhow, I’ve
only seen her a few times. She kind of stands off in the distance,
and like Graham has some stereo receiver in his head, he gets up
and goes off the bus and meets her. They disappear for, oh I don’t
know, maybe ten minutes, and then he comes back alone. He doesn’t
seem any different. I always assumed he was getting himself
serviced.”

I grimaced at the thought. “When does this
usually happen?”

“In the middle of the night.”

“What?” I shrieked. People in the café
turned to look at me. I gave them a sheepish look and lowered my
voice. “What? In the middle of the night? How?”

“I stop at a gas station to fill up or a
truck stop for food and she’s usually there.”

“Well, don’t you find that fucking
weird!?”

“Look, Rusty, of course I find it weird. But
these are rock stars. They all have their weird quirks. And having
scary chicks show up at gas stations you stop at isn’t that unheard
of. Especially when they’re following the bus.”

Alarm bells rang in my head. “They follow
the bus?”

“Sometimes. Fans, groupies, they’re all
obsessed. It doesn’t matter what band.”

I sat back in the booth, feeling floored and
disturbed at the same time. All this time I assumed that if I
didn’t see the GTFOs, they weren’t around. But they were and it was
something as simple as following the tour bus. Now I knew for sure
that I had seen Sonja the night before. And she’d done something to
Noelle, something horrible, to get her to freak out like that.

Suddenly I felt very vulnerable. Were they
still around? Were they hiding out in the rain, waiting for our
next move? I wiped a hand at the window, smoothing away the foggy
condensation, but seeing only the gray daylight and wind-scattered
downpour outside.

“I hope you’ll keep our talk just between
us,” Bob said. “I don’t know how much longer this tour is going to
go on for, but I don’t want to get booted off the job because they
think I’m talking hocus pocus. I’ve got a big mortgage back home
and a wife that looks up to me, and gigs like this are hard to come
by.”

I nodded absently, not even sure what I was
going to do with our talk.

“If I were you though,” he continued, “I’d
consider going back home soon. You’re a beautiful young woman and
you’ve got a good brain in that head. I’d hate for anything to
happen to you.”

I eyed him carefully.

“Do you think something will?”

“It’s rock and roll, Rusty. Anything that
can happen, will happen. Even the impossible.”

I took little comfort in that and had my
first sip of coffee. Bob was right. It really was damn good.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Bob and I left the café just as the rain was
starting to let up. I took that as a sign. I don’t know what kind
of sign, but a sign that some sort of change was happening. As
creepy as our conversation had been, talking about it with Bob
strengthened me somehow and made me feel like I wasn’t alone. The
band might have been in one camp, but we were in the other and in
this case it wasn’t a bad thing, especially if the curse nonsense
turned out to be true.

Back on the bus, the mood was somber and
tense. It turned out that the band had decided to continue on with
the tour. They would get a replacement bassist to cover for Noelle
starting with the Nashville show and hopefully that person would
fit in well enough that they could replace her for the rest of the
tour.

“What’s Mickey going to say about it?” I
asked.

Jacob twirled his rings with downcast eyes.
“Knowing Mickey, he won’t have a problem with it. He loves Noe and
all but he loves music more. Sad fact of most musicians, ain’t that
right boys.”

Robbie grumbled while Sage stared at Jacob
thoughtfully, as if he was figuring something out. Jacob felt his
eyes on him and, without looking up, grinned very slowly, like an
afterthought.

Seeing as the band wasn’t going to be
playing, Jacob made Bob drive the bus to an office center and he
got in touch with the promoter of the Atlanta show. Then he,
Robbie, and Graham started the long process of trying to telephone
as many bassists as they could think of. I stayed with Sage on the
bus, both of us surrounded by a weird hush of unsaid words and
mixed feelings. He had gone through so much in the last twenty-four
hours, I wasn’t even sure how to act normal around him anymore…if
there ever was a normal between Sage and I. The Tom Waits show
seemed like a lifetime ago. We seemed like different people
then.

After maybe twenty minutes, Sage got up off
the couch and stretched, his arms reaching far above his head. I
tried not to stare at his stomach and the hint of defined abs that
momentarily peeked out underneath his black western shirt. My
hormones didn’t seem to understand the bigger picture here.

He glanced down at me and I quickly looked
away. I knew he caught my staring and I prayed that the flare I
felt on my cheeks wasn’t translating into a blush.

“Do you want to get out of here?” he
asked.

“Where do you want to go?”

“Anywhere that serves copious amounts of
liquor.”

I nodded, thinking that sounded like a most
reasonable plan. We left the bus, relieved that the rain had
stopped, and let Jacob know we were going to be at a bar down the
street.

“Which one?” Jacob asked.

“The dirtiest,” Sage replied.

He wasn’t wrong. It felt like we walked
forever, but eventually Sage spotted just the right place. A neon
open sign stuttered, one window was boarded up with wood in place
of fixing broken glass, and a wall of motorbikes were lined out
front. Inside we were met with a bevy of heavy-set, pock-marked
gentlemen and hostile glares. I was glad that Sage’s hair wasn’t
that long and that the visible tattoos on his arms gave him some
sort of street cred. I hoped that his mixed heritage skin wasn’t
going to cause any problems.

We sat down at a hard wooden booth and
proceeded to drink, starting with a pitcher of beer while
Steppenwolf played on the stereo. We didn’t speak much until we
were starting another pitcher and I figured Sage’s tongue would be
looser. So far he seemed so wrapped up in his own thoughts.

I cleared my throat and adjusted my seat.
“So, you’re part Mexican, right?”

He didn’t look surprised or annoyed at my
question, though I thought he would have, considering he never
really talked about himself in interviews.

“Is this part of the interview?” he
asked.

I shook my head, but I was silently cursing
myself for failing to bring along the tape recorder. Though, from a
moral point of view, interviewing someone when they were drunk
wasn’t exactly fair anyway.

“My mother was,” he said. His eyes drifted
over to the pool table where two bald men in leather vests and
spiderweb tattoos were racking up. “She moved up to Redding when
she was sixteen to do farm work with her mother. I think they
worked at every abusive shithole in town until they finally found
my father. We had an apple and apricot orchard at the time. It
wasn’t the biggest but it was still more than my dad could handle
by himself.”

I was secretly thrilled that he was opening
up to me. “So your mom and dad met because she worked for him?”

He smirked. “Not quite the fairytale story,
is it?”

“It kind of is. I’m sure the life of a
laborer isn’t the best,” I said, thinking of the poor men I saw
bent over in the hot Ellensburg fields.

“No, it’s not. My dad took care of his
workers very well but he was one of the rare ones. They were so
grateful. Maybe that’s why my mother married my dad, I don’t know.
Their life back in Magdelena was pretty shitty from what I
understood. Then my grandfather died and they had nothing. My
mother, grandmother, and uncle snuck into the US, crossing the Rio
Grande, swimming for their lives just like in the movies. My uncle
was older and decided he wanted to live in Arizona. He had some
friends there, and if you can believe it, he wanted to start a
Mariachi band. But my grandma had dreams of the Pacific Northwest.
They were heading up to Washington but Redding was as far as they
got.”

He took a few big chugs of beer and I
watched him intently.

“Anyway, my mom and dad fell in love. My
grandma died a short while later. Maybe she had an idea of what was
to come. I don’t know about Ellensburg, but Redding is a small
place. Aside from Mount Shasta and the lake and the agriculture,
there’s nothing going on there. People talk. People are
close-minded. When they discovered my father was dating, and then
marrying, a Mexican, they made their lives hell. This was the 50s
and that kind of shit wasn’t heard of. My father was beat up a lot.
When I was younger, I was kicked around by the other kids. I may
have had green eyes but my skin was dark enough to be different,
especially when I was young. And my mother…one night she went out
to get groceries. She never came back. I was eleven years old at
the time and just getting into music and my world came crashing
down. She was attacked in the parking lot of the grocery store,
just beside her car. Beaten to death by a bunch of racist
fucks.”

I knew my mouth was open but I couldn’t find
the strength to close it.

He avoided my eyes and stared down into his
beer, watching the bubbles with vague interest.

“They never did find out who did it. I never
told anyone this but…it made me afraid. I feel so…ashamed…that I
stopped talking to my uncle. I stopped listening to Mariachi
records. I stopped speaking Spanish. My only saving grace was
meeting Robbie one day after school. I was fourteen, he was
fifteen. We both loved Iron Butterfly and Elvis. The rest is
history.”

I chewed on my lip. I knew the rest thanks
to band interviews, but I also knew deep down that wasn’t the whole
story. But now, of all times, wasn’t the time to press him.

“I’m so sorry,” I said softly. I reached out
and put my hand on his. He brought his brooding eyes up to meet
mine and I nearly got lost in them.

“So that’s me,” he said, voice low and
rough. “What’s Dawn’s story?”

I removed my hand.

“I don’t have much of one,” I told him,
giving him a carefree smile. He didn’t buy it. His eyes narrowed
until they were two green slits.

“Not used to having the tables turned on
you, are you? Always the interviewer, never the interviewee.”

“Something like that.”

“Well, we already know you’re a soon to be
ex-rodeo champion and you’re not sure if music journalism will fill
the gap.”

“I guess.”

“So tell me about your father. You do have
one of those?”

I prickled a bit at that. “I do. He’s a good
man.”

“You sound hesitant. What does he do?”

I paused. “He works at a farm equipment
repair shop.”

“Respectable blue collar job.”

“He used to raise cattle. And then Timothy
hay.”

“So you’re a farm girl through and
through.”